Cultural preview

0 commentsWhen I listen to The Clarks’ new LP, Another Happy Ending, I see a crowded bar somewhere in the mid-west, with farm-hands sitting next to pretty farmers’ daughters swilling their Bud Dry, the whole...

0 commentsInspired by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea,” Mary Rodgers (Richard Rodgers’ daughter) and Marshall Barer penned the musical Once Upon a Mattress at a summer writing...

0 commentsWhen my kids were little and we’d set off on a long road trip, my bag of traveling tricks would always include several Peter, Paul, and Mary tapes. And as we rolled along the New Jersey Turnpike on...

0 commentsPostmodernism is a self-fulfilling concept. As a rejection of other precepts that had long since outgrown their revolutionary geneses, postmodernism was hip. As a nebulous philosophical zone that...

0 commentsImagine, if you will, a dark and stormy night in the lab of Dr. Frankenstein. Having already created life once, he turns his attention to giving form and free will to something even more challenging...

0 commentsIn 1939, Gian Carlo Menotti received a commission from the National Broadcasting Company to write the first opera specifically composed for a radio listening audience. The result was the one-act...

0 commentsMost of us know it now as the name of a theater, or perhaps through the living history of Teresa Dowel-Vest’s play, but Vinegar Hill was once much more. For over a century, the neighborhood was the...

0 commentsIf the work in Andra Samelson’s exhibit at the Fayerweather Gallery, the cosmic-theme “Ephemeris” looks like the sort of thing that someone might have doodled while talking on the phone, it’s for...

0 commentsPint-sized adventurers who wander down the hall to the Back Gallery at the Virginia Discovery Museum often find themselves in another world. Until May 4, these explorers can tread in the tracks of...

0 commentsIt’s been a long time since I was a teenager, plowing through three or four 130-page books a week, eagerly exercising a reader’s young appetite.I read books called The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and...

0 commentsThe upcoming week is packed with great shows: Scene Creamers on Friday at Tokyo Rose (the new band of Ian Svenonius and Michelle Mae, formerly of D.C.-based The Make-Up); a CD release party for local...

0 commentsBooze, beads, boobs, bawdy behavior-– what would Mardi Gras be without these indulgent ingredients? Is it possible to celebrate this most decadent of holidays in a healthy, family-friendly fashion?...

0 commentsFor his exhibit at the Second Street Gallery, National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols has gone enlargement crazy. He’s blown up his photos from 35 millimeter prints into absolutely huge,...

0 commentsIt’s National Engineering Week, and to cap off their week-long celebration, Engineering School is getting out all their toys and inviting the community– especially middle and high school kids...

0 commentsAlice McDermott writes of suburban summers, of first trips on the city bus, and of whistling past the graveyard. She writes of a world where sidewalks are the color of Necco wafers, uncles drink...

0 commentsThe nation was stunned in 1998 when gay college student Matthew Shepherd was severely beaten and left hanging on a fence in Laramie, Wyoming. Shepherd died from his injuries and exposure shortly...

0 commentsIs it a good thing that children are becoming more empowered consumers? What are the moral, spiritual, political, and social consequences of the relentless transformation of just about everything...

0 commentsThere have been plenty of times over my years as a parent when I’ve longed for the support of a village, a collection of wise grandmothers and helpful friends who, when I’m in danger of losing my...

0 commentsWhen the Jefferson School closed its doors last September, a concerned community wondered how best to ensure preservation of the venerable old building. Public outcry had already forced the city to...

0 commentsAfter five years in this strange little piece of Americana we call our town, folk-musician Danny Schmidt is leaving Charlottesville. Schmidt’s songs, a mixture of country, folk, blues, with a dash of...

0 commentsThe Richmond Ballet, Virginia’s state ballet, returns to Piedmont Virginia Community College for a three-day residency February 18-20. Included in the schedule are three public events: a performance...

0 commentsSaddle up, cowgirls and cowboys. Unless, that is, you prefer to mount your buckin’ bronco bareback. Either way, get ready for some serious thrills and spills at the newly spruced-up Virginia Horse...

0 commentsAs a few observant writers remarked after the Columbia disaster a few weeks back, space travel has become mundane, dropped from the radar screens of the public’s attention and imagination. When...

0 commentsWhen Thomas Jefferson asked Meriwether Lewis to lead the exploration of the new western territory, one of his three main objectives was scientific documentation of new plant and animal species. A new...

0 commentsOne thing you don’t expect to come across in an anthology of poetry about Native Americans and Mexicans is a reference to Monty Python.But there it is, in a piece called “Brave Mr. Buckingham”...

0 commentsCall out the dogs and set up the torture chamber, for the following statement will be regarded as heresy by some idie-rock elitists here in town. I actually like the new solo album by former Dinosaur...